1. Field of the Invention
The present invention resides in the field of the collection and working of multipart printed products and relates to a device for the collection of printed products and a method for the production of print articles.
Methods of this type are used to compile any chosen print articles, in particular newspapers and magazines, in a respectively desired manner from different printed products, in particular from main products and part-products or sheets.
In print finishing, the term collect is often used in the wider sense as an umbrella term for collation, insertion and collection in the narrower sense. By collection in the narrower sense is here meant—in contrast to insertion—the sequential placement of part-products, for example of folded sheets, one above the other, in which the part-products are deposited in a predefined sequence one after the other on saddle-shaped rests. In this collection in the narrower sense, collection is carried out from inside to out, since the part-product which is situated on the inside in the finished print article is deposited on the rests as the first part-product. In contrast thereto, by insertion is meant the collection from outside to in. A wide variety of methods for the production of multipart printed products by means of collection or insertion are known to the person skilled in the art.
For the production of such printed products using high-performance methods, collection and insertion drums made by Ferag AG have been proved successful in the market for years. With these drums, in respect of collection saddle-shaped supports, in respect of insertion V-shaped compartments, are led continuously past a plurality of feed-in or supply points, and at each supply point a further part-product or the main product, for instance a further folded sheet, is usually added to the formed product by means of feeding devices. In the case of collection in the narrower sense, a start is usually made with an innermost folded sheet, in the case of insertion with an outermost folded sheet or main product.
With the known high-performance devices, outputs of 40,000 to over about 80,000 print articles per hour are producible. The path of conveyance of the printed products between the successive feeding devices, which are often referred to as feeders, or other working stations runs in the drum-shaped apparatuses of the latest product generations in an irregular spiral shape, regions without axial advance respectively alternating with regions with axial advance. In the case of collecting apparatuses in the narrower sense, such as the gathering-stitching drums of Ferag AG, as are known, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 5,324,014, the printed products to be produced are deposited on saddle-shaped supports. The sequence in which the individual part-products, and the main product, are brought together normally corresponds to the sequence in which the successive feeding devices are charged with the products. Within an apparatus or drum, this sequence, in known methods and apparatuses, cannot be changed within a run.
The facility to prepare, for example glue or stitch, part-products in early process stages outside the collecting apparatus is known, but is currently still utilized in relatively small measure. Some reasons for the reluctance of professionals to collate already previously worked part-products are listed in EP-B-0409770. If pre-produced part-products, or part-products obtained simultaneously on different process sections, are intended to be connected to form an end product, then the ready-collected end product is usually first glued in the collecting apparatus or a downstream working apparatus.
A print article, comprising, for example, a news magazine collected and stitched in a gathering-stitching drum, with an inner folder, can at present only be produced by the insertion of the folder into the news magazine after the latter has been stitched, the stitching of the folder following the collection, and the subsequent insertion of the folded product in a further working step.
2. Discussion of Related Art
For the person skilled in the art, the terms main product and part-product, in connection with the aforementioned types of collection in the narrower sense and of insertion, are clearly defined, and he will be familiar from the prior art with the respective relative position of the products one to another, their orientation in the production process and the time sequence of their supply.
CH 584153 and the corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,399 disclose an insertion drum in which, at a first supply point, a first folded printed product, for example a main product, is introduced, with its fold forward, into a pocket-like receiving part of a star feeder and, in the course of one revolution of the star feeder, the print product is opened and conveyed to the next, axially offset supply point. At this next supply point, a further, folded print product is inserted into the first, opened print product. It is described that, at further downstream supply points, further print products are inserted into the opened print product, whereupon, respectively, the already inserted print product is opened to allow the insertion of the directly following print product. The multipart end products or articles which are thereby formed thus have an outer part, which is fed first into the insertion drum, and at least one inner part disposed therein. In this collection from outside to in, the order or sequence of products in the finished article is defined, as already mentioned, by the order, or the charging, of the feeding devices. Thus, for example, a part-product inserted by a third feeding device in the sequence cannot end up as a main product beneath the part-products inserted by a first and second feeding device. The flexibility of the apparatus in the production of the print articles is correspondingly limited.
EP 454343 discloses a method and an apparatus with which also other types of multipart print articles than those previously known can be produced and known print articles can be joined together differently. Here, at least one inner part and an outer part are joined together into an end product not solely by collection in the narrower sense, the folded outer part finally being placed with its open side margin opposite to the fold to the fore astride the inner part. The fact that the outer part is added on only at the end allows inner parts to be joined together in any chosen manner. Thus the possibility exists, for instance, for the inner parts to be collected in the narrower sense or to be inserted one into the other. It is also possible, however, for a further inner part to be deposited astride an inner part or a plurality of joined-together inner parts, and, if need be, for at least one further inner part to be added laterally thereto. At the end, the outer part is then placed astride all joined-together inner parts. The method thus allows print articles to be produced in which, respectively, that open side margin of an inner part which lies opposite the fold runs along the fold of the outer part. It has been shown in practice that the transport of the plurality of differently orientated inner parts or part-products in the axial direction along the translatory conveying section, which in the drum, moreover, is superimposed by the rotary component, is not without problems. Although the method and the apparatus according to EP 454343 already offer a high measure of flexibility in the compilation of the end products, a product in which that sequence of part-products which exists in the end product differs from the sequence of feeding devices in the direction of conveyance along the conveying section is here too, however, unachievable.
For an understanding of the present invention, it is important briefly to consider the commonalities and differences of the rotary collecting apparatuses, i.e. of the collecting drums in the narrower sense and insertion drums, and the limitations which exist in the known rotary methods. The prior art of the rotary collecting principles is set out with reference to a few embodiments which are described below.
CH 584153 shows a “traditional insertion drum” for the insertion of printed products, which revolves about a single axis. The central element of the insertion drum is the horizontal-axis elongated star feeder with axially successive portions. The star feeder is characterized in that the inserted printed sheets describe not only a two-dimensional path, but a helical or spiral path, i.e. a three-dimensional curve. By means of advancing means, for example roller tracks which are configured in connection with pressure elements, the printed sheets are displaced along the axis from portion to portion and so complete, though as yet unstitched printed products are formed, which at the end of the drum are removed at a removal point.
In DE 2447336, an insertion and collecting drum is described, which can be used, in particular, to insert at least one primary product into a folded main product. It is already provided, however, that the collection in the narrower sense too can be carried out from inside to out, in which case, at one end of the star feeder, the innermost section and, following thereupon, one after the other, the more and more outer lying section, have to be supplied. It is disclosed that the folded sheets can be collected from inside to out on rests and are conveyed on a helical or spiral line about the center axis, the folded sheets being displaced from loading point to loading point by means of advancing means. Furthermore, the person skilled in the art infers from the document that the printed sheets are fed to the rests, preferably continuously, by means of so-called clamping conveyors. A high processing speed is achieved by a continuous delivery of the folded sheets from the clamping conveyors and by a displacement of the folded sheets from compartment to compartment of the star feeder. The person skilled in the art also includes revolving collectors, as are known, for example, from EP 0095603, under rotary collecting technique. A gatherer-stitcher revolving about two axes here forms, instead of a drum, the central element of the apparatus. As in the case of the collecting drums, feed stations or other feed conveyors can be used to charge the revolving receiving saddles. In EP 0095603, feed conveyors having grippers are described, which are fastened to a revolving traction member at a distance apart and the delivery regions of which run substantially in the same direction as the direction of conveyance of the collecting conveyor. A continuous combing-in of the printed sheets is effected over a lengthy path of conveyance, so that difficulties of charging by means of feed stations are able to be prevented.
Common to the known rotary working devices and methods is that the main products and/or part-products to be conveyed are orientated in the drum, with respect to the radial component of the direction of conveyance, with a supporting edge orientated transversely to the path of conveyance and, with respect to the axial or translatory component of the direction of conveyance, along or parallel to the direction of conveyance.
Further devices which have a processing drum and are used for processing print products are known, for example, from EP-A 0341425, EP-A 0341424 and EP-A 0341423, as well as the corresponding US patent specifications U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,052,667, 5,052,666 and 4,981,291. By means of these devices, folded print products are collected by being deposited one on top of the other astride the wall elements of the processing drum, and the collected print products, if need be, are provided with a stapling, or the print products in the compartments of the processing drum are collated or inserted by being placed side by side or by print products being introduced into other folded print products.
In EP 0681979, it has already been described that certain working operations on print products cannot be carried out in processing drums, or, at least, only with great effort. In addition, there are working operations which demand a considerable amount of time or consist of a number of successive work steps. This necessitates, if the processing capacity is to remain constant, large structural lengths of the processing drum, which, in addition to the increased spatial requirement, can also lead to design problems.
In EP 0681979, the execution of certain working steps on the print products, or the adding of additional articles to the printed products, is already therefore proposed no longer in the processing drum, but rather in a circulation loop. In the transfer from the processing drum to the circulation loop and from the circulation loop back to the processing drum, the print products maintain their state without change. Since the circulation loop can be run along practically any chosen motional path, the opportunity is given for very varied working steps in the region of the circulation loop outside the actual processing drum. The circulation loop offers, in particular, the facility to lead the printed products away from the processing drum for the performance of specific working steps, or for the feeding of additional products, and to return them to the processing drum for finishing. It is further proposed that, by means of a circulation loop, the previously collected printed products are able to be transferred from one processing drum to the other. It is described as a fundamental advantage of EP 0681979 that the print products maintain their state when transferred from the circulation loop to the processing drum, or vice versa. It is clear that the device according to EP 0681979 is suitable for processing both print products which are arranged astride the wall elements of the processing drum and the dividing elements of the circulation loop and/or print products which are introduced between the dividing elements into the receiving parts of the circulation loop. Within those elements of a circulation loop which are disposed outside the processing drum, the printed products are not conveyed in the axial direction.
In a preferred embodiment according to FIG. 8, in EP-A 681979 it is further proposed that, through the sequential arrangement of two circulation loops, the printed products to be produced are moved away from the drum by means of a first circulation loop and are fed back to the drum by means of a second circulation loop arranged downstream in the axial direction.
In FIG. 9, an embodiment is shown in which, in a processing device, three processing drums are connected to one another by two loops. The transfer of the print products from one processing drum to the next, or the leading away of the print products from a processing drum, is respectively realized by means of circulation loops.
The arrangements proposed in EP 0681979 already allow a high measure of flexibility in the production of print articles from a plurality of printed products. The order of the printed products in the finished print article is also additionally determined by the sequence of the feeding devices along the conveying section.
In none of the known high-performance collecting apparatuses in the wider sense is it possible to break, change or reverse the collecting direction, i.e. the fixedly predefined direction of the sequential arrangement of the products in the finished article, in just one apparatus. For instance, in no known gathering-stitching drum is it possible to collect a magazine (in the narrower sense), stitch it and then, in the same drum, also insert a folder.
In all known collecting drums in the narrower sense, collection can accordingly be realized in the predefined sequence only from inside to out. In all known insertion drums, insertion can be realized only from outside to in along the path of conveyance.